Characterization and analysis of ribosomal proteins in two marine calanoid copepods

Copepods are among the most abundant and successful metazoans in the marine ecosystem. However, genomic resources related to fundamental cellular processes are still limited in this particular group of crustaceans. Ribosomal proteins are the building blocks of ribosomes, the primary site for protein synthesis. In this study, we characterized and analyzed the c DNAs of cytoplasmic ribosomal proteins(c RPs) of two calanoid copepods, P seudodiaptomus poplesia and A cartia pacifi ca. We obtained 79 c RP c DNAs from P. poplesia and 67 from A. pacifi ca by c DNA library construction/sequencing and rapid amplifi cation of c DNA ends. Analysis of the nucleic acid composition showed that the copepod c RP-encoding genes had higher GC content in the protein-coding regions(CDSs) than in the untranslated regions(UTRs), and single nucleotide repeats(>3 repeats) were common, with "A" repeats being the most frequent, especially in the CDSs. The 3′-UTRs of the c RP genes were signifi cantly longer than the 5′-UTRs. Codon usage analysis showed that the third positions of the codons were dominated by C or G. The deduced amino acid sequences of the c RPs contained high proportions of positively charged residues and had high p I values. This is the fi rst report of a complete set of c RP-encoding genes from copepods. Our results shed light on the characteristics of c RPs in copepods, and provide fundamental data for further studies of protein synthesis in copepods. The copepod c RP information revealed in this study indicates that additional comparisons and analysis should be performed on different taxonomic categories such as orders and families.